Assorted notes and ramblings of mine. Mostly about endurance sports. Some serious, some not so serious. Some work related, others personal.

Monday, May 26, 2008

I Knew That I Would Not Be Good At This

Where does the time. I knew that I would not be good at this. I had admired other peoples blogs from afar for some time. Somehow they always seemed to have some snappy well written post up on their blog or something else entertaining almost every day. I will fully admit that it's been nuts recently with work, with Paolina getting ready for Ironman Lanzarote, me squeezing in the odd ride here and there, Matthews soccer practices and games also trying to keep up with all the social networking on Slowtwich, Facebook, Imeem, and then Paula Newby Fraser sends me an invite to join some new triathlon dedicated social networking site called IamTri or something like that. It's being run by the WTC - the people that run the Ironman races. Looks interesting, but it's just one more thing to get to check out and do each day before . . . . . getting to my blog which I have been terrible at updating.

Work: Nineteen Wetsuits

Currently we can't make them fast enough. Orders are flooding in and we are still signing up new dealers. So far we are over 50% ahead of where we were last year at this time. We have had to, at great expense, air-freight in our last two shipments from Hong Kong where our wetsuits are made, just so that we could fill back order and have stock to fill current orders. In this business it's one of those good problems to be having. I would like at this time to thank all of our wonderful retail customers who have really stepped up this year for Nineteen and also the end-user customers who have bought Ninteen wetsuits this year. Thank you to all of you. The picture to the right is of Tereza Macel who was the first woman out of the water yet again - this time at Ironman Arizona. She's wearing our Nineteen Frequency model. We have sponsored Tereza for a few years now and she has been great to work with. Unformtunatly Tereza just broke her arm in a freakish accident whike out running - we wish her a speedy recovery.

I was asked in an interview, recently why Nineteen has been so successful. I am not sure there is one thing. There are a number of market forces, that in addition to our hardwork and our products great quality that are all coming together to move things forward. It's very exciting to see the progress. As a life-long sales-person, this is what you live for.

IM LanzaroteThe great news is that Paolina finished a strong 6th place in a very competitive women's field. I am so proud of her. She trained really hard for this. Went in with almost no racing yet this year. Travelled a long way to a strange place, and did very well on what is generally regarded as the toughest IM race course in the world. As if they all are not hard. The picture on the right is of Polly doing some rather unorthodox training for the race. It is typically very hot in the Canary Islands and it's not been very warm here this spring. What to do.?Set the bike up on the trainer in the bathroom. Put a heater in there and get the room up to 30C. Do some high intensity cycling sessions( 90 minutes tops) to get used to the heat. Whatever it was, it worked out well as the heat on race day was the leat of her concerns. Polly got a spot for the Ironman World Championships in October this year in Hawaii. So looks like another trip for her and hopefully for me to to another hot, humid and exotic Island.

Polly also received a nice new bike fram from the fine folks at Trek Bicycles - one of her sponsors on the Timex Triathlon team. We had it built up and detailed just in time for a few last training rides before heading off to Lanzarote.

What else is going on?

Matthew has been playing up a storm on the soccer pitch. His team the Aurora Stingers are off to a great start this year. With a nunber of wins. League play has started and will go all summer. Aurora is a hot-bed for youth soccer. They have so many kids that are good at Matts level that they have two Rep/Club teams. It's amazing to watch the level of skill at this level( 10 & 11 year olds)At right is Matthew at a training camp that he went to at Bethal College in Wheeling W. Virginia

The Victoria Day Weekend was designated as a Severn River Cottage work weekend. Unfortunately the weather did nit cooperate and it was rainy, cold an windy all weekend long. We distched plans to put a new roof on the cottage, in light of the weather - for roofing you really need sunny clear conditions for 3 - 4 days and we opte to start a refurbishment of sort of the Boathouse. It desperatly needed new decking, so we started on that only to discover that some of the support beams right at the water line where in poor shape. Suddenly, a relativly easy a straight-forward job, just became very complicated. My bother-in-law, my Brother with the aid of my Step-Father and myself came up with a plan and it all fell into place. We replaced the beams, re-engineered the deck substructure to better facilitate drainage and then got at the decking. Unforntunately we ran out of time to get all the decking done. It will have to wait for another weekend. Sorry. No pictures. My brother John took some on his Camera phone. Everyone fogot the "good" cameras. Edit - Now we have a picture!

Finally, I did the first Cyclissimo bike club race of the season on the weekend. The picture to the right is of me racing last year at the KW Classic race. I had no expectations going in. "Training" has been sporadic at best, but I managed to hang in there with the strong guys until the end, but was dusted fairly badly in the sprint. Received a nice compliment from JP the winner, for a nice lead-out on the final run in to the sprint at the finish and for so much work during the race to keep the pace high and form the final break away. That's bike racing - sometimes the real hero is not the one across the finish line first! :)

That's it for now I need to get back to some writing and editing that I am doing for the Subaru Triathlon Series Program.

Thanks for the link. That's bizarre. Some of those are my races/times and others are definatly not me. I have not really raced seriously in over 8 years. There must be another steve/stephen Fleck out there.